Setting Up Your Personal Web Page

If you are an Arc.Net subscriber on the 160 hour (or better) plan, you have 10 megs of space on our web server to use as a personal web page*. This space is not automatically set up when you sign up with us and must be requested either by filling out the online form. Once you have your own directory, follow the instructions below to get started.

Before getting started, be aware of what you're getting yourself into. Although there are programs out now that will write web pages for you that require little or no knowledge of HTML, we recommend learning at least the basics of HTML. You can find plenty of help sites devoted to learning HTML on just about any search engine. A good search should include keywords like 'html beginner help'. You'll also need to be aware of what file types are supported for display on web pages such as .gif's, .jpg's, .htm, etc. Once you've gotten the basics down you're ready to write your first page!

Index.htm is the first file accessed when someone looks at your page. If you do not have a file named index.htm in your directory anyone trying to view your page will get an error message saying that directory browsing is not allowed. So, this is the first file you should create. In most cases a temporary index.htm will already be placed in your directory by one of the Arc.Net staff members. You can save this page to your hard drive and edit it or just create a new page on your hard drive and name it index.htm. Once you have index.htm you can then upload it to your directory.

To upload your page you'll need at least an FTP program. CuteFTP is available from our download page, from www.winfiles.com or other archive sites, or you can use any FTP program of your choosing. Sorry, for the time being, we cannot tell you how to configure your web publisher program to access the site as there are soooo many different types. Maybe we'll write a section on it sometime, but for now, this is just something you'll have to figure out on your own. The hostname you'll want to log into is users.arc.net, Once connected you'll be prompted for your user name and password. If you entered them correctly you'll then be in the root directory. You will have to CD to your home directory (\yourusername) in order to upload any files.  You can then upload your file(s) to this directory. Remember, you can use upto 10 Mb of space for files and images. You can use Front Page or Interdev to access your user directory, but Front Page Extensions are *not* installed by default, you have to ask for them to be installed.

That's basically it in a nutshell. If you have any questions please e-mail them to help@arc.net.

You can access your page with a web browser by typing http://users.arc.net/yourusername in the address box.

Have fun!!!

* Personal web space is not intended to be used for business purposes.

Call (850) 863-9280 for business web page pricing.